


Like the Sun

by aptasi



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aptasi/pseuds/aptasi
Summary: Rand asks Moiraine about Lamon.Set late in book 5
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Like the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Despair and impied narcissistic abuse

Rand patted Jeade’en and lifted himself into the saddle, the sun scarcely up and the taste of camp breakfast still on his tongue. If all went well today they would reach Jangai Pass early. Then, there would be more to do. 

The Sun Palace," Moiraine was saying regally in his ear, with all the pleasantness of a buzzing gnat, "Is more formally called the the Palace of the Rising Sun in Splendor. It is the residence for the Cairhienin royal family, as well as their attendants and sometimes favored courtiers. As a residence, it therefore passes from house to house as the..."

"You grew up in the Sun Palace, didn't you?" Rand asked. He thought he remembered hearing that somewhere. Maybe it would settle Moiraine down a bit if she thought he was retaining knowledge.

Moiraine's eyelids flicked, ever so slightly. "Yes, I did. The residence passes from house to house as the monarchy..."

"Were you happy there?" Rand asked. He did not know where the line of inquiry came from, except possibly to get Moiraine to stop talking like an academic tome, which had gotten on his nerves what seemed like an entire age ago and not let up once. 

"I thought I was." Moiraine said after some time. "They gave me everything I knew to want."

An Aes Sedai answer if he ever heard one. "And how did you feel about Lamon?" Even consciously trying to tune things out, Rand could not help but learn about Lamon. If he managed to ignore Moiraine on the subject, he certainly couldn't ignore the Aiel.

"When King Lamon cut down the sapling of the tree of life that had been gifted him by the Aiel as an unprecedented gift of peace, he caused..." Moiraine began. 

Rand rolled his eyes. "Feel, not think. I'm asking you, Moiraine, not the Tar Valon Library. You knew him."

She looked around first, almost nervous, if an Aes Sedai could be said to be so. There were no Aiel close enough to hear at the moment, the business of horses being of little interest to them. Rand wondered if he'd just made a backhanded Daes Dae'Mar threat without intending such a thing. Typical of the bloody obscure Great Game, if so. 

"I am not about to tell the Aiel you're related to him. "Rand rolled his eyes to let her know he found the notion absurd, "I don't think you'd learn any lessons, or teach any, by having a spear put through you."

Moiraine nodded, "Thank you." she said. "That discretion is appreciated."

"Now tell me what you felt about Lamon. That's an order."

"He, and Mordecan and Aldecain, my other uncles, were like the sun..."

"If you think you can just use the most obvious symbol of..." Rand muttered. 

"In the Aiel Waste." Moiraine added and something in her voice made him stop. "The sun is the force of nature that everything else must be built around. It is underlying structure so obvious it becomes invisible."

He looked at her incredulously, scarce finding the sun invisible at any recent time. 

"With such" she touched her skin where it was still slightly sun damaged leaving little white indents "destructive potential. One must learn to endure used to it, or hide oneself away from it, or perish. Changing its course would be absurd, changing its nature the same."

Rand nodded absentmindedly. Metaphor, just what he needed. Parables were another Aes Sedai circumvention of the straight answer.

"Why, if born to such a brutal sun." Moiraine said. "One might almost think it was virtue to be adapted to it. One might think of others as lesser, to be unable to cope with it. One might wonder how anyone could live in a world without one. One might weep with fear to behold water six span wide and not boiled away."

"Did you?" Rand asked. "Weep for fear to see water?"

Moiraine didn't answer for a moment and Rand almost smiled. If asking personal questions was a way to get Moiraine to be quiet occasionally...

The Aes Sedai seemed to realize that line of thought, and turned her head at him. "Not just fear." She answered, with a strange dignity, not her usual. "But because she was beautiful, and I did not understand." 

That felt weird to Rand coming from Moiraine. The Aes Sedai surrounded herself with beauty but had never seemed affected by it. And surely the Sun Palace had appeared magnificent if nothing else. There was no reason for Moiraine not to understand beauty. 

"The night the Aiel took the Sun Palace," Moiraine said "Was the first time I truly believed that water and air could put out any fire. Even fire that was not fire at all, that was brighter, more immutable. Even that one..."

Rand swallowed 

"And then I heard Gitara's voice." Moiraine said slowly, her voice heavy with more emotion than he had ever heard from her. "In that same night, as if that same thought, crying, 'The Dragon takes his first breath on the slope of Dragonmount ...Light help us. Light help the world. He lies in the snow and cries like the thunder. He burns like the sun.”"

Rand's breath caught. 

Moiraine's face was smooth, but her voice almost breaking. "Like The Sun." she repeated softly. 

Moiraine looked up at him, this woman who; ever since he'd seen her at Taren, Rand had regarded as just shy of a force of nature herself. He remembered, abruptly, intrusively, the sight of her running out from Rhuidean, burnt and exhausted into repeated collapse, falling and scraping herself up, managing to put one foot in front of the other, to be early. That and the swirling waters at the ferry made a dissonant juxtaposition. For a moment he wondered how often he named Moiraine the force she too was just surviving around. 

"You have begun to moralize, Moiraine." Rand said after a moment trying to decide on a reaction. 

"Have I?" she said steadily. "I apologize."

"You may give me your prepared speech on the life of the Cairhienin court and their customs now."

"Thank you." The Aes Sedai said quietly. 

She was finally learning to thank him sincerely, Rand thought, if nothing else.


End file.
